Techstrong News Recap – June 22, 2023
On June 22, William Willis covered Intel’s plans to build a $33 billion chip plant in Germany, Microsoft’s announcement that the service disruptions in early June were due to a DDoS attack and TikTok investing billions Southeast Asia to boost its e-commerce platform. He also talked about Rivian’s plans to adopt Tesla SuperCharger plugs. Finally, he previewed articles from Cloud Native Now, Digital CxO and Security Boulevard, which covered how to leverage chaos-driven infrastructures, a survey looking at the state of digital transformation and TrustCloud integrating its GRC management tools with Atlassian applications.
Transcript
Hi again. Everyone hear are the headlines for June 22nd. First up, Intel and the German government have reached an agreement for Intel to invest over 30 billion euros in building a chip manufacturing site in Denberg, Germany.
Germany aims to reduce its dependence on imported chips and global supply chains and become a major global semiconductor production site and has pledged to cover a third of the investment required with Chancellor Olaf Scholtz meeting Intel CEO O Pat Gelsinger to finalize a deal. This investment represents the largest ever made by a foreign company in Germany and will significantly expand Intel's production capacity in Europe. This being said, the first semiconductor facility is expected to begin production in four or five years, and the plan is subject to approval by the European Union to ensure fair competition.
Next, Microsoft announced that the significant service disruptions in its flagship office suite, including Outlook and OneDrive, as well as this cloud computing platform in early June were due to cyber attacks. A hacktivist group called Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility for launching distributed denial of service attacks, which flooded the sites with junk traffic. The attacks temporarily impacted the availability of some services, but Microsoft assured customers that no data was accessed or compromised.
The company did not provide specific details regarding the extent of the impact or the number of affected customers. Though zooming out, while DDoS attacks are be typically more of a minor problem than a data breach, they can cause quite the disruption when it is on a service giant like Microsoft, which has a significant impact on global commerce. The investigation into the attacks and the affiliation of the group is still ongoing.
The incident underscores persistent risks posed by DDoS attacks and highlights the need for robust defense measures to mitigate their impact. In other news, TikTok has announced plans to invest billions of dollars in Southeast Asia over the next few years, aiming to drive growth in one of its key markets while facing increased scrutiny in the United States. TikTok made the announcement during a speech at a TikTok forum in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The investment is intended to bolster the app's e-commerce marketplace, TikTok shop, which has been expanded to more countries in the region despite experiencing growth. TikTok shop still lags behind established players like Shoppy and Lazada. However, with over 325 million monthly visitors in Southeast Asia, TikTok plans to leverage its user base to increase its presence in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, with an expected user base growth of over 10% this year.
The company aims to support small and medium-sized businesses by providing training and assistance, as well as fostering youth entrepreneurship through a partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Next up, the EV Maker Rivian has announced its plans to join Tesla's charging network. Next year following GM and Ford, Rivian will adopt Tesla's charging connector to establish it as an industry standard.
Existing Rivian vehicles will require an adapter, but those manufactured from 2025 onward will have a Tesla charging port. This move reflects the industry's consideration of transitioning to Tesla's connector known as the North American charging. Standard R Vivian's decision will provide its owners access to over 12,000 Tesla supercharger plugs, expanding charging options.
The trend of adopting Tesla's charger connector is growing with other automakers evaluating the switch. Tesla's superchargers are highly coveted due to their extensive fast charging capabilities. With this being said, though, Rivian will continue expanding its own charging system while incorporating Tesla's connector on cloud native.
Now, we've even article looking at how to leverage chaos to create higher quality cloud native applications. Building high quality applications no longer needs many of the older practices. In fact, cloud native applications and CCC CI/CD methodologies has led to rapid innovation.
And another technique that can improve applications is chaos driven infrastructure. com. On digital cxo, we have an article looking at a survey on the current state of digital transformation organizations across every industry are going digital.
The early leaders of DX have reinvented business processes for the digital first world. This being said, though, some companies can struggle when adopting dx. com.
Finally, on Security Boulevard, we have an article looking at trust cloud's announcement that they are integrating its governance risk and compliance management tools with Atlassian AppSec. Trust Cloud has stated that this CA capability will help move the most important tasks to a queue and will eventually allow for AI to check the accuracy of GRC workflows. com, and that's today's Techstrong News recap.
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